1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus, system, and method for monitoring computer system components in a graphical topologic viewer, and more particularly relates to an apparatus, system, and method for keeping “low-level” or detailed information for a computer system component visible in high-level overviews of large or complex systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Administration of information technology (IT) systems is becoming more and more complex as the size and complexity of these systems increases. Many IT systems include multiple client systems, host systems, and/or application systems that interact with multiple local or remote servers across local-area networks, wide-area networks, storage area networks, intranets or the Internet. These systems often include a variety of storage devices and repositories, all linked together by communication lines and ports. Devices used to manage and administer large and complex systems often rely on visual representations of the overall system or its components. However, due to the complexity and size of today's systems, it is generally impossible to represent the system as a whole in one representation. Instead, visual representations of systems often rely of variations of semantic or graphical zooming that hide or reveal various levels of detail pertaining to the system or its opponents. One challenge with this type of progressive information disclosure is that specific details of a particular component are often lost (no longer visible) when switching from low-level views to high-level views. Another drawback to these visual representations is that they rely on reducing the amount of information that can be shown to a user at the same time, in order to provide system overviews.
Many administration tasks require maintaining a high-level overview of the system as a whole, while at the same time, showing very detailed information about a select small number of items or components. Conventional approaches, however, do not provide for this kind of viewing, particularly if the items or components under observation are distributed throughout, or are in, remote parts of the overall system. For example an administrator of a storage administration system may want to maintain an overview of the entire storage topology, potentially encompassing several storage area networks (SANs) and locations in a dashboard fashion in order to monitor the overall system status. However, present devices, systems, and methods do not allow this overview while at the same time allowing the administrator to monitor in greater detail, a particular storage subsystem or component.
From the foregoing discussion, it should be apparent that a need exists for an apparatus, system, and method that would allow the details of a component to be viewed regardless of whether the present view is a less-descriptive high-level view of the system in which the component resides. It would be a further advancement to provide such an apparatus, system, and method that would allow interaction with a particular component regardless of the system view. It would be another advancement to provide such an apparatus, system, and method that would allow a detailed view of components residing in different locations within the overall system. It would yet another advancement to provide such an apparatus, system, and method that would allow displayed components to act as navigational links to more detailed views of the component. Such an apparatus, system, and method are disclosed and claimed herein.